US returns Dos Erres massacre suspect to Guatemala

Guatemala’s renewed effort to bring justice to the families of 251 people massacred in Dos Erres almost 30 years ago is finding success — with some help from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

Pedro Pimentel Rios, 54, was deported from Los Angeles to Guatemala on
Tuesday to face charges for his alleged role in the 1982 massacre while
he was a member of elite fighting force the Kaibiles.

Pimentel Rios had been a maintenance worker living in Santa Ana,
Calif., far from the village where residents’ heads were smashed with
sledgehammers and their bodies dumped into a well. Girls and women
endured repeated rape over two days before being shot or strangled to
death.

"For the families who lost loved ones at Dos Erres, justice has been a
long time coming, but they can take consolation in the fact that those
responsible for this tragedy are now being held accountable for their
crimes," said ICE Director John Morton.

The government-run Kaibiles are believed responsible for many of the
worst atrocities of Guatemala’s 36-year civil war, which ended in 1996.
After years of stalled prosecution, in 2009 the Inter-American Court of
Human Rights ordered the Guatemalan government to investigate and charge
those responsible for the massacre.

Pimentel Rios is the fourth former Kaibil discovered to be living in
the U.S. and targeted by ICE as part of its fledgling Human Rights
Violators and War Crimes Center. Just one month after the massacre, the
former solider began working as an instructor at the notorious School of the Americas, then based in Panama.

Gilberto Jordan, 55, now sits in an American federal prison, serving a
10-year sentence for failing to disclose his involvement with the
Kaibiles and Dos Erres on his U.S. citizenship application. Last year GlobalPost broke the story that Jordan was living in Delray Beach, Fla. and he later admitted his involvement to U.S. investigators.

Two other men, Jorge Vincio Sosa Orantes and Santos Lopez Alonzo, face
similar charges in the U.S., among 17 mid- and low-level soldiers
accused of war crimes. Lopez Alonzo adopted the orphaned son of one of the families killed in Dos Erres, forcing the boy to call him
“father” and subjecting him to physical and psychological cruelty for
15 years.